due to the distance, students usually had to reside

due to the distance, students usually had to reside at the school, with all associated costs borne by their parents. So, things were a little better, but they still were not right.

Pressure mounted on our locality and its neighbors to provide a decent secondary facility for Black students. In 1946 a resolution presented to the Virginia state government described the contemporary options as ‘small and inadequate’ and requested (virtually demanded) funding for something better. Rather remarkably, the result came to rapid fruition. On October 1, 1948 George Washington Carver Regional High School on US RT 15 several miles south of Culpeper opened its doors to over 450 Black students. Though still separate, and not yet equal, the school was a vast improvement over what had gone before. A really significant step forward had been taken. Over the next 20 years, some 2500 Black students, many, many of these current or former residents of Rappahannock, experienced a nurturing environment at Carver High School. Many went on to lives of great significance as doctors, nurses, teachers, military officers, etc.

But as significant as the school was and remains in the hearts of its graduates, it was, like all its contemporaries, still separate and inherently or at least potentially unequal, as noted in the ‘Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling on segregation. As in the result of the Civil War, the 1954 decision would seem to have settled the matter. But once again, accumulated attitudes and social norms were not easily abandoned. Final desegregation would not come in Virginia until it was court-ordered in the late 1960s. Desegregation forced the original premise of Carver to change. In 1968 it became the Carver-Piedmont regional vocational educational center. It remains a Voc-Ed facility to this day, though in drastically altered form.

As we know, things today are clearly infinitely improved over what went before. But the tendency'for X to dislike,